Strategies for Implementing Transformational Changes:
Discuss about the Mindfulness in Leading Transformational Change.
The business world has drastically evolved since the spread of globalisation and liberalisation and the changes in internal and external market environment factors are forcing business organisations to undergo changes at regular intervals. Business organisations often implement workplace changes when the market conditions change. These changes can be related to major and minor operations, strategies, technologies, processes while some changes can also be related to the structure of an organisation or can have an impact on the entire organisation.
Transformational changes are those changes that are related to the structure, culture and management of a business organisation and are mostly attributed to the change in a company’s underlying strategy. Transformational changes, as the name suggests, are major changes that can have an effect on the entire organisation, which makes it difficult to implement. While all other changes are either related to the development or replacing something, a transformational change is related to the way in which a company operates. Therefore, it is one of the most difficult changes to manage for human resource managers.
In this report, we will conduct a literature review to gain a better understanding of certain strategies that can be helpful in dealing with transformational changes.
According to Avonile Wylson and Julie Chesley (2016), mindfulness can be one of the most important tools to ensure successful implementation of a transformational change. They have defined mindfulness as a state in which a person is attentive and is aware of all those things that are happening in the present. Mindfulness can play a huge role in dealing with ambiguity that arises during transformational changes and it can be a powerful way to promote positive outcomes. In their research, it was identified that during transformational changes, the workplace environment becomes ambiguous, which further leads to high anxiety levels amongst the employees and generation of resistance to change. According to most of the respondents, who were leaders or were change agents in different organisations, being mindful helped them in bolstering confidence and establishing trust amongst their co-workers while trying to implement transformational changes.
According to Jury Gualandris & Robert Klassen (2018), transformational changes are difficult to implement but involving the stakeholders in the change process can help business organisations in delivering a transformational change successfully. A transformational change is bound to have an impact on the entire pool of stakeholders in some way or the other, which also increases the possibility of resistance to change. To deal with such high resistance to change, it is important that the stakeholders are involved in the process right from the beginning and all decisions are taken with their support. According to Dean Anderson & Linda Ackerman Anderson (2010), engaging the employees in the change program can also be one of the best techniques to deal with a major transformational change. Employees are considered to be the most important stakeholders in business organisations and they are the ones who are affected by change programs the most. Even the success of a change program is largely dependent on the reaction of the employees to the change. Therefore, it is imperative to keep the employees engaged in the change program and making them realise that the management values their association and is implementing workplace changes for the betterment of everyone.
Mindfulness
Catrien Termeer, Art Dewulf & Robbert Biesbroek (2017) in their research identified a number of strategies that can help change leaders in implementing a transformational change. One of the best strategies to ensure successful implementation of transformation changes is to put a strong governance and management in place. Forming a powerful governing and managerial body and also establishing a coalition amongst them can allow business organisations to maintain an urgency throughout the organisation and identify root causes for the occurrence of resistance to change. According to Loretta Cooper (2017), transformational changes can be made successful by over-communicating the mission and vision of the change management program. One of the biggest reasons behind the failure of change programs is the lack of adequate communication, which leads to rumours and fears in the minds of the employees. Lack of communication can also introduce a feeling of negativity in the workplace and it becomes very difficult to deal with such negativity and people spreading it. People who develop fear in their minds start to have an influence on others, which can ultimately lead to the failure of the change program.
In his work, Mark Hughes (2015) identified a number of factors that can lead to the failure of organisational transformations. Lack of a learning culture in an organisation has also been identified as a key issue that can lead to the failure of transformational changes. In the present day business world, it is recommended for business organisations to foster a learning culture in their workplaces as it makes the employees more open to new experiences and keen towards the achievement of new skills and competencies. Overall, a learning culture in a workplace can assist human resource managers in keeping the workforce prone and open to organisational changes by explaining them the importance of changing with the market trends.
McAlpine, Seabrook, Ryan, Feeney, Ripple, Ehrlich & Ehrlich (2015), neuroscience can have a great impact on the change efforts of an organisation. It has been identified that as soon as there is something new happening, it is the tendency of human beings to start comparing the two situations, which takes up a major portion of their mental energy. This drainage of energy can cause mental fatigue and can lead to the development of fear in the minds of the employees. As a result, there is panic and the employees become resistive towards the change program. David Rosenbaum, Elizabeth More, Peter Steane (2018) identified the role that leadership plays in the successful implementation of transformational changes. Majority of the cases, where change management programs fail, it has been observed that lack of support from senior level management or leaders of the workplace is one of the prime reasons. Transformational changes require a lot of support from the top management because it involved a lot of investment of resources and managerial skills. Lack of support from the top can make it difficult for the change agents to implement a change in the workplace because of lack of involvement and unavailability of resources.
Involving Stakeholders
Lastly, Stefan Cantore (2017) discussed the importance of reward systems in the successful implementation of transformational changes. One of the best techniques that can help human resource managers in implementing a transformational change is to associate the program with certain rewards that would enable them to keep the employees motivated and reinforce a change in behaviour shown by the employees. It has been discovered that human resource managers often focus more on the overall system of an organisation rather than focusing on the people. Focusing more on the human resource aspect can also assist in implementation changes as the employees are the people who have to live and make the desired changes. By associating rewards for employees, the focus of the managers can be shifted from the system to the employees.
From the information presented above, it can be clearly observed that implementing transformational changes in the workplace can actually be a difficult thing for the managers of even the topmost organisations in the world. The information available from us through secondary sources of data clearly identifies certain issues that can prevent human resource managers from implementing transformational changes. Some of the issues are listed below:
- Lack of support from leaders of the organisation or senior management
- Lack of adequate resources
- Lack of a reward system
- Focusing more on the system rather than focusing on the people
- Inability to implement a learning culture in the workplace
- Neuroscience effects
- Fear of the unknown
- Negativity and politics in the workplace, etc.
All these reasons have been found to have a negative impact on change programs and have been identified by most of the scholars in the field of change management. Let us compare the findings from our literature review with some pioneer change management models and check their reliability & validity:
Kurt Lewin’s Change Model à Kurt Lewin’s 3 stage change model is one of the most widely talked about methods in the business world and in the change management subject. The theory developed by Kurt Lewin suggests that for successful implementation of a change program, the entire program should be divided into three stages i.e. unfreeze, move and refreeze. In the first stage, he suggested that the organisations should form teams and create an urgency in the workplace by communicating the way in which the organisation can improve. In the second stage, the actual transition or the transformation should take place. In this stage, he suggests that the employees should be kept engaged and any fear in their minds should be dealt with by the change agents or the leaders (Hussain, et al., 2016). It is at this stage that most of the resistance to change occurs. Therefore, it is important to keep communicating with the employees efficiently. In the last stage, he suggested that the change in behaviour demonstrated by the employees should be adequately rewarded in order to reinforce the right behaviour amongst them.
Employee Engagement
Kotter’s 8 step change model à John Kotter developed another model that is extensively used by business organisations in implementing workplace changes. He suggested that to ensure maximum results, the change program should be divided into eight steps:
- Create a sense of urgency
- Create a guiding coalition
- Create a vision for a change
- Communicate the vision
- Remove obstacles
- Create short-term wins
- Consolidate improvements
- Anchor the changes (Appelbaum, et al., 2012)
Even in this model, communication, team-work, leadership support and reward systems are given a lot of importance.
Conclusion
Comparing the change models developed by Kurt Lewin and John Kotter with the the findings from literature review, it can be clearly seen that most of the findings are true and can actually have an impact on an organisation’s plan to implement transformational changes. Factors, such as lack of leadership and top management support, improper communication, lack of reward system, etc. can actually hinder the progress of a change program because the change models developed by Kurt Lewin and John Kotter address most of these issues in their own way. Therefore, transformational changes are major changes that are difficult to implement but with the right strategies and techniques, it can become easier for human resource managers to successfully implement it. (Wylson & Chesley, 2016)
References
Anderson, D. & Anderson, L. A., 2010. Beyond Change Management: How to Achieve Breakthrough Results Through Conscious Change Leadership. s.l.:Wiley Publishers.
Appelbaum, S., Habashy, S., Malo, J. & Shafiq, H., 2012. Back to the future: revisiting Kotter’s 1996 change model. JOURNAL OF MANAGEMENT DEVELOPMENT, 31(8), pp. 764-782.
Cantore, S., 2017. Leading transformational culture change through conversations. Management in Healthcare, 2(1).
Cooper, L., 2017. 5 Steps to Making Transformational Change Happen. [Online] Available at: https://www.ama.org/publications/MarketingNews/Pages/5-steps-managing-transformational-change.aspxv[Accessed 1 May 2018]
Gualandris, J. & Klassen, R., 2018. EMERGING DISCOURSE INCUBATOR: Delivering Transformational Change: Aligning Supply Chains and Stakeholders in Non?Governmental Organizations. Journal of Supply Chain Management, 54(2).
Hughes, M., 2015. Leading changes: Why transformation explanations fail. 9 February, 12(4), pp. 449-469.
Hussain, S. T. et al., 2016. Kurt Lewin’s change model: A critical review of the role of leadership and employee involvement in organizational change. Journal of Innovation & Knowledge , 11 October.
McAlpine, et al., n.d. Transformational change: creating a safe operating space for humanity. Ecology and Society, 20(1), p. 56.
Rosenbaum, D., More, E. & Steane, P., 2018. Planned organisational change management: Forward to the past? An exploratory literature review. JOURNAL OF ORGANIZATIONAL CHANGE MANAGEMENT, 31(2).
Termeer, C., Dewulf, A. & Biesbroek, G. R., 2017. Transformational change: governance interventions for climate change adaptation from a continuous change perspective. Journal of Environmental Planning and Management, 60(4).
Wylson, A., 2016. The Benefits of Mindfulness in Leading Transformational Change. Graziadio School of Business and Management, 19(1).
Order an Essay Now & Get These Features For Free:
Turnitin Report
Formatting
Title Page
Citation
Outline
